Democrats’ and big government’s push to make the District of Columbia the nation´s 51st, extremely and reliably liberal state met solid resistance on April 30, with a Democratic senator shying away from the power grab.
DailyMail.com reports that West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said that he opposes unchecked action by Congress to make the nation’s capital a state – a state that would enjoy influence, power and privileges like no other. Manchin says he believes D.C. statehood can be established only through a constitutional amendment.
The senator pointed out how prior Republican and Democratic administrations came to the same conclusion. He is the first Democratic senator to come out against the D.C. statehood bill while Republicans are united in opposition.
The bill has support among Democrats in the Senate, but will not succeed without Manchin’s support. A filibuster requires 60 votes for legislation to be passed. Democrats currently hold 48 Senate seats, with two “independent” senators always reliably siding with them on votes. Republicans have 50 seats, with Kamala Harris holding a tiebreaker vote.
The House recently approved a bill strictly along party lines to make the District of Columbia a state with one representative and two senators, while a tiny sliver of land including the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall would remain a federal district.
An identical statehood bill passed the House in 2020, but faltered in the then-Republican-controlled Senate. Now, with Democrats having seized power in the corruption-ridden 2020 elections, some have been pushing to eliminate the filibuster so that only a simple majority in the Senate would be needed to get legislation passed.
